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| Newsletter | July 2002 |
Globalisation does not mean the impotence of the state, but the rejection by the state of its social functions, in favour of repressive ones, irresponsibility on the part of governments and the ending of democratic freedoms. -- Boris Kagarlitsky, dissident Russian economist
Our e-mailing of our newsletter has been a bit erratic to say the least of late. If you receive this newsletter please e-mail out to anyone you know locally or who you think will benefit from a copy.
Back copies of our newsletter are available on-line on our web site. Not all back copies are available as we are rebuilding the web site.
Our material may be freely used and quoted provided it is not used out of context and full credit is given to BVEJ.
In 1995, I was arrested and tortured by the police, after leading a strike of 5,000 workers of Indoshoes Inti Industry. The workers were demanding a wage increase (they were paid only 70 pence for an eight hour a day). They demanded maternity leave too. This company operated in West Java, and produced shoes for Reebok and Adidas. I have seen for myself how the company treats the workers, and used the police to repress the strikers. -- Dita Sari, Indonesian activist
The World Cup is less about football and more about company profits, exploitation of moronic fans and exploitation of workers who produce the goods.
Sponsorship in the UK
Workers in Indonesian sweatshops have to survive on less £32 a month (incl overtime), less than a living wage. To survive they need £67 a month to cover food, housing and transport. Sweatshop workers supplying Nike and Adidas have been threatened if they agitate for better pay and conditions. One worker has already been killed and another faces criminal charges. Nike in particular has not done enough to address sweatshop conditions.
In 1992, Michael Jordan was paid $20 million for endorsing Nike shoes, more than Nike paid their entire 30,000 strong Indonesian workforce.
In China, sweatshop workers are being forced to work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. If they are lucky they may get one day off a month. They live in overcrowded insanitary conditions.
In India, child labour is still being used to stitch footballs. Poor working conditions are the norm in Vietnamese sweatshops producing footballs for Umbro.
Nike workers in Ho Chi Min City are forbidden to go to the bathroom more than once in an 8-hour shift. Workers often faint whilst working on the factory floor due to malnutrition, exhaustion, fumes and heat. Workers are systematically cheated out of overtime and Sunday wages.
Nike workers at a sweatshop factory near Ho Chi Min City were exposed to carcinogens 177 times the legal limit. More than three-quarters of the sweatshop workers have suffered respiratory problems. At the same factory workers have been forced to work a 65-hour week for $10 a week.
Nike uses SF6 in its 'air' trainers. SF6 has 22,000 times the greenhouse potential of CO2 and remains in the atmosphere for several hundred years.
In a sweatshop factory in the Dominican Republic, workers earn 8 cents for every $20 baseball cap they make. Hundreds of workers have been fired for attending night school, hundreds more for trying to organise a trade union. The sweatshop makes baseball caps for Nike.
Indonesia activist Dita Sari refused to accept a $50,000 'human rights award' from Reebok as the money had been 'sweated' from her members.
In Indonesia, there are five Reebok companies. 80% of the workers are women. Since workers can get only around $1.50 a day, they then have to live in slum areas, in unhealthy conditions ... At the same time, Reebok collects millions of dollars in profits, every year, directly contributed by these workers.
A worldwide campaign has been launched to raise the $50,000 to replace the dirty money Dita Sari bravely turned down.
Naomi Klein, No Logo, Flamingo
John Pilger, Heroes, Verso
John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso
A massive battle is shaping up to save unique ancient woodland in West Durrington near Worthing in West Sussex which is under serious threat from property developers and road builders. Titnore Lane and the redevelopment site is located to the north east of Highdown Hill between the A27 and A259 to the South. To the north of the site and the A27 lie Clapham Woods (the largest dip slope unitary ancient woodland complex on the South Downs) and the South Downs where the ground rises to above 300 feet. Titnore Lane for many years has been a rat run for traffic commuting between the two major south coast trunk roads, but its origins date back into prehistory as a droveway. From those very earliest times the Lane has been an important feature in the life of community's, whether it be for moving animals, food or timber the chances are that it has always followed the same meandering trail. But not anymore if the planners get there way. The horrific plans before Worthing Borough Council at the moment involve 875 new homes and a 9.1 acre industrial development - both outlined in red - together with the widening and straightening of Titnore Lane to cope with the increase in traffic between the A27, A259 and the new developments.
The proposed road works would plough through rare ancient semi-natural woodland that has been there since the last ice age. It has been designated a Site of Nature Conservation Importance (SNCI) and is completely irreplaceable. Several hundred trees would have to be felled, many over 150 years old and comprising oak, ash birch and willow. The woods are home to many species of wildlife, including dormice. These trees are part of one of the last remaining areas of ancient woodland on the coastal plan and ironically the developer accepts that the ancient woodland is of great conservation importance as it is known to support a considerable variety of bird species, Long Tailed Tit, Blackcap, Treecreeper, Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff. They also accept that the Oaks along Titnore Lane are of lichenological interest and include Schismatomma quercina which is very rare in Sussex and the uncommon species Arthonia vinosa
Titnore Lane itself is part of our cultural heritage, reaching back at least to the Anglo-Saxon period and most probably way beyond that. It was part of a longer track that reached northwards across the Downs and is rich in archaeological remains. The woods below Highdown, the important iron age hillfort, are an important amenity for local people and the quality of life would be severely affected by the massive housing estate - and by the increase in traffic.
Ancient woodland is our equivalent of tropical rainforests and equally valuable. They are remnants from the post-glacial tree cover, managed by prehistoric man, and sympathetically managed to around the time of the Second World War. They are a rich natural heritage and usually also a rich archaeological heritage.
To destroy Titnore Wood would be an act of eco-vandalism. We are quick to criticise the Third World for their part in rainforest destruction, to destroy Titnore Wood would be no different.
Convicted felon Gerald Ronson, through his offshore Heron Group, is one of the developers.
Please object to this eco-vandalism by writing to:
Head of Planning Worthing Borough Council Portland House Richmond Road Worthing Sussex BN11 1LF planning@worthing.gov.uk ref: WB/01/01010/OUT
More info (and sample letters):
Useful reading on woodlands and development of the English countryside:
W G Hoskins, The Making of The English Landscape, Guild Publishing, 1988 {orig pub 1955, revised coffee table edition by Christopher Taylor}
George Peterken, Woodland Conservation and Management, Chapman and Hall, 1981
Oliver Rackham, Trees and Woodlands in the British Countryside, Dent, 1976
Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside, Dent, 1986
S R J Woodell (ed), The English Landscape: Past, Present and Future, Oxford University Press, 1985
I will have failed if in five years time there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order, but I urge you to hold me to it. -- John Prescott, 6 June 1997
By its own test, Government transport policy has failed. More traffic on the roads is causing more congestion, more pollution and more misery. The policy has been wrong, the investment has been inadequate and the Government has run scared of upsetting motorists. That has left transport in the crisis it currently faces. -- Tony Bosworth, FoE Transport Campaigner
By his own measure the Fat Engine Controller has failed. No amount of spin from sleaze-ridden Neo-Labour can hide this failure.
Rail number of journeys up 25% Light rail number of journeys up 36% Bus number of journeys unchanged Roads volume of car traffic up 7%
The best the Fat Engine Controller has been able to do is to huff and puff and claim the Transport Select Committee does not understand his ten year transport programme (criticised by BVEJ in the past) and accuse them of stabbing Liar Byers in the back.
Well done the RMT union for drastically cutting their contribution to neo-Labour and brown-nose neo-Labour MPs. The Fat Engine Controller in a fit of pique has resigned from RMT.
Southwest Trains are refusing to carry cycles.
Instead of the backbreaking, muscle straining exercise of pulling up or snapping GM crops, a group calling itself the Brassica Broadcasting Corporation simply scattered conventional seeds on the ground over the top of a recently planted GM crop trial. The conventional and GM plants have since been growing up together, sabotaging the oilseed rape trial at Alderminster, Warwickshire. This new-style midnight operation went completely undetected at first and has changed the density of the control crop, added crop debris to the herbicide resistant crop, and rendered the results dubious, if not invalid. The group can be interviewed by email: brassicabroadcast@hotmail.com
An estimated 250 people from across Scotland met at Wester Friarton Farm in Newport for a Tea in the Field protest. 70 anti-GM crop demonstrators trampled crops in the field. Four people were arrested during the trashing.
Victory for the Pink Castle! The Pink Castle had been occupying a field in Dorset since April because the field was due to be planted with GM crops. But now the farmer's nephew says it is packing up because the Aventis trial has been written off and they now want to plant a non-GM commercial maize crop there.
Despite 11 September 2001 and falling passenger numbers BAA has still managed to make a profit. Airport infrastructure has to be expanded to meet the predicted doubling of passenger numbers in the next 20 years.
Heathrow T5 has not yet commenced as several hundred planning conditions post-Inquiry have to be met. State-of-the-art reed beds are cutting pollution to watercourses (which will be news to those who have been sampling the water). CO2 emissions reduced!
Curiously no mention of the Heathrow night flying case or its implications. Mention is made that BAA made a contribution to the government consultation on the Future of Aviation, but no details are provided.
Copies of the BAA Annual Report and the BAA submission to the government consultation exercise may be obtained on request.
Do activist have an impact? Last year the annual report was full of amazing environmental claims, the chairman's address at the AGM could have been at a gathering of Greenpeace. At last year's AGM these claims were thoroughly rubbished by an activist shareholder. This year no such claims are being made. [BVEJ newsletter #0015 August 2001]
The BAA AGM will take place at the QEII Conference Centre (opp Parliament). Friday 19 July 2002 (same venue as last year). Doors open for coffee at 10 am, AGM starts at 11:15 am. Peaceful protest outside will start at 10 am, and finish in time to allow protesters to attend the AGM and grab a coffee and buttonhole directors before the AGM starts. Shareholder activists are wanted to attend the AGM and ask embarrassing questions.
A sudden about turn by Richard Buxton (see snippets last BVEJ newsletter). Jenny Tonge MP (LibDem Richmond) has done wonders in extracting some money out of recalcitrant local authorities. In return they wanted some publicity for their public spirited actions (giving the public back their own money). This has undermined Richard Buxton's flawed argument that we need to keep a low profile in order not to upset the judges or to alert the opposition to the importance of the case (as if they did not know).
It is now full steam ahead for fund-raising, which is to be carried out across Europe because of the wide implications of the case.
The government's main arguments will be the economic necessity of night flying. Good research, reasoned arguments, are now needed to counter this. Any research help will be welcome.
The date of the hearing is set for the autumn.
[BVEJ newsletters passim]
This programme can sustain itself only until the public grasps the two unavoidable facts of nuclear power. The first is that there is, as yet, no safe means of disposing of the wastes it produces. The second is that even if one is found, the monitoring and safe management of these wastes requires 250,000 years of political and economic stability. No government on earth can guarantee five. -- George Monbiot
It is all too easy to make a dirty nuclear weapon. Not that difficult to make a fissile nuclear weapon. All you need is the raw material.
Whilst all eyes are focused on the World Cup, a shipment of plutonium, sufficient for fifty nuclear weapons, was due to slip out of Japan. A wet dream for Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. Why struggle to extract from highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods when all that is required is to hijack a ship on the high seas containing MOX pellets? The chemistry required to separate the uranium and plutonium is simpler than that required for designer drugs.
The plutonium is supposedly on its way back to Britain after BNFL were forced by Japanese antinuclear groups to admit falsifying data. Although Greenpeace is attempting to stop the plutonium shipment with a legal challenge in the UK. One of the ships will be acting as an armed escort and the other will be carrying plutonium mixed oxide fuel (MOX) that had originally been reprocessed at Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria by BNFL and transported to Japan in 1999 for use in their power plants. The return of this material will be in defiance of both international and UK law.
The fear is that the ships could be sitting ducks for 'rogue states' and 'terrorists' that could capture the plutonium and use it for weapons. Former government nuclear physicists, ex-MoD senior staff and authorities on international terrorism warn that the journey is too risky, security has been described by the definitive defence briefing Jane's Foreign Report as 'totally inadequate', but there is too much money involved for BNFL and Blair to heed these warnings. Refusal to take back the plutonium would sabotage around £4bn of investment between Japan and BNFL. The new MOX plant at Sellafield cost $500 million to build and therefore needs this trade with its biggest potential customer Japan to justify its existence.
Once again Blair has shown himself to be a two-faced hypocrite. After 11 September 2001 he demanded that the trade in the technology of weapons of mass destruction be 'exposed, disrupted and stamped out'. Less than three weeks later he quietly approved the MOX shipment and for the Sellafield MOX plant to reopen for business. Blair's pronouncement on weapons of mass destruction have proved to be as meaningless as all his other statements. The raw material for nuclear weapons is to be transferred halfway around the world to keep afloat the bankrupt state nuclear processing industry.
To avoid creating the impression that this freight might possibly be dangerous, Japan has insisted that the ships have no military escort. They have weapons on board, but neither the radar-guided anti-missile defences nor the speed required to evade an attack from a fast boat. The ships' defence consists of a 30 mm gun, and lightly armed BNFL police.
A shipment made nearly 20 years ago from France to Japan with less plutonium than this upcoming transport, required armed protection from the United States, France and the UK, as well as thousands of military personnel deployed in the Panama Canal while the ship transited. This shipment from Japan will have no dedicated military escort, but instead a commercial freighter armed with 30 mm cannon. Given the UK Government's stated commitment to combatting international terrorism, it seems a fundamental contradiction that the same Government should be agreeing to the transport of nuclear weapons-grade material with such poor security cover.
To spread plutonium across an entire region, terrorists need only send a missile or boat like the one Bin Laden used to attack the USS Cole, equipped with the right explosives, into the side of one of the freighters. The MOX fuel is stored in containers which can resist temperatures of 800C for 30 minutes. Fires on ships can burn for 24 hours at 1000C. One of the possible three routes takes the ships through the Panama Canal where they would be very vulnerable to a land or air attack.
Stealing the material is as simple as overwhelming the 26 BNFL policemen on board and blowing the hatches off.
Such are the threats to our security from 'terrorists' that the police and every Tom Dick or Harry must have access to our e-mail accounts, monitor our phone calls, 'protesters' must be classified as 'terrorists', democratic rights curbed in the fight to protect our democratic rights and Afghanistan must be bombed in the name of TWAT (The War on Terrorism), on the other hand commercial expedience and Blair's arrogance will dismiss such concerns as nonsense in order to ship plutonium halfway around the world in virtually unguarded, unprotected civilian freighters. More shipments will follow if this shipment is deemed a success.
The route the return shipment will take if the legal challenge fails is still unknown, one of three routes are most likely, but whichever route it takes, a protest flotilla will be there to meet it.
Apart from the security risks UK and Japan are disregarding the rights of en-route states to prior notification and consultation.
In terms of the international legal framework for this shipment, Article 56 of the Law of the Sea gives states jurisdiction over their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ - 200 miles) for the purpose of the protection and preservation of the marine environment. The 2001 shipment avoided Australian and NZ's EEZ but would have transited a number of Pacific nations EEZ. The return shipment would also violate an undertaking the UK Government gave to the International Law of the Sea Tribunal (ITLOS) in November 2001 that no imports of plutonium MOX fuel associated with the operations of the Sellafield MOX Plant would go ahead before October 2002.
As with earlier shipments, no Environmental Impact Assessment on the risks of this shipment has been conducted. There has been no consultation on emergency response to accident or attack, and no fair and equitable liability and compensation arrangements exist in spite of the fact that coastal states bear the most risk.
A British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) train transporting a nuclear flask collided with a lorry at a level crossing in Kent. The flask was on its way to Dungeness, where it was due to be filled with up to five tonnes of radioactive spent uranium fuel rods before heading to Sellafield for reprocessing. The collision came in the same week as two BNFL boats arrived in Japan to pick up enough usable plutonium to create 50 nuclear bombs. Ironically, the same week the US government went into an Orwellian spasm to announce they had detained a terrorist about to destroy the US with a dirty nuclear bomb, or was it that he was merely thinking about it? A further irony is that the transport of nuclear material within Japan has been halted during the World Cup as there are not enough police to guarantee its safety!
George Monbiot, Dirty Bombs Waiting for a Detonator, The Guardian, 11 June 2002
SchNEWS, A MOX On You, Friday 14 June 2002, Issue 359
Mark Townsend, Seasickness, The Ecologist, June 2002
This was the moment of truth. It shows that even in the post-11 September era, the FBI can be taken to task for violating the civil rights of Americans. -- Darryl Cherney
After decades of harassing, framing, imprisoning, or 'eliminating' anyone seen as a threat to the American status quo of big business, big brother, and big shopping malls, the FBI is finally getting a taste of long-overdue justice. In a landmark ruling reached on Tuesday 11 June 2002, a US jury found three FBI agents and three police officers guilty of violating the rights of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney.
This tale of FBI lies and repression began on 24 May 1990, when Judi Bari, a Californian environmental activist, was nearly killed by a motion-triggered pipe bomb wrapped with nails that exploded directly under the driver's seat of her car. Judi was maimed and disabled and Darryl Cherney, the passenger, was also injured. Upon arriving at the scene, the FBI and local police decided to help Bari and Cherney through this traumatic event by blatantly ignoring evidence of their victimisation, and deciding instead to arrest them for the bombing, telling the media that Bari and Cherney were violent Earth First! activists who had accidentally blown themselves up on the way to carry out some evil terrorist plot.
The FBI even failed to investigate an anonymous letter sent to a newspaper shortly after the bombing. The letter contained details about the bomb never released to the public and the writer claimed to be 'the Lord's avenger'.
And just why did the FBI and local authorities want to ignore this attempt on Bari's life and instead use the incidence as an opportunity to slag her off in the media? Because Bari and Cherney were fighting against commercial logging in an area where the timber industry has friends in high places. On the day of the bombing, Bari and Cherney had been driving through California on a speaking tour aimed at recruiting college students for Redwood Summer - a campaign of non-violent mass protests against intensive logging. She and Cherney were seen as such a massive threat to the corporate logging industry that in the two months prior to the bombing, both had received numerous death threats from timber industry supporters. They reported these threats to police, who told Bari 'If you turn up dead, then we'll investigate.'
But instead of investigating the bombing as attempted murder, the FBI and Oakland Police, tried to frame Judi and Darryl for the bombing, accusing them of knowingly transporting the bomb that nearly killed them. These sensational false charges made national headlines, and the FBI and their accomplices kept a two-month media smear campaign going with a series of false claims about physical evidence linking Judi to building the bomb. But after delaying formal charges for seven weeks, when it was finally time for the State to present evidence in court, surprise, surprise, the FBI and Oakland Police didn't actually have any. The State announced it would not file charges, citing the lack of evidence. The Oakland Police closed their 'investigation', but the FBI continued theirs, using the pretext of 'investigating' the bombing as a cover for spying on Earth First! activists, sending agents to create files on over 500 people who had nothing to do with the bombing.
A year after the bombing, when it was clear that the authorities were making no genuine effort to solve the case, Judi and Darryl filed a federal civil rights suit against the FBI and Oakland Police Department. The lawsuit was delayed from coming to trial for nearly 11 years by legal shenanigans aimed at wearing down Bari and Cherney. The FBI gained an immense advantage when Judi died of breast cancer in 1997, but Judi's estate, Darryl Cherney, their legal team and supporters have kept the suit alive and have cleared every hurdle and won every appeal.
The trial that had taken 11 long years to come to court finally ended with a stunning vindication of Judi and Darryl, and a $4.4 million award of damages. A full 80% of the damages were for free speech violations, showing that the jury understood that the motivation for the false arrest and illegal searches was to interfere with Judi and Darryl's political activism. 'This case is not just about me or Darryl or Earth First!,' Judi once said, 'This case is about the rights of all political activists to engage in dissent without having to fear the government's secret police.'
The jury in the Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney federal civil rights lawsuit against four FBI agents and three Oakland Police officers awarded plaintiffs $4.4 million for violation of the activists' Constitutional rights and returned a verdict largely in favor of Earth First! activists Cherney and the late Judi Bari. In a legal victory of historic proportions against the FBI, the jury found that six of the seven defendants violated the First and Fouth Amendments of the Constitution by arresting the activists, conducting searches of their homes, and carrying out a smear campaign in the press, calling Earth First! a terrorist organization and calling the activists bombers, in the aftermath of the explosion of a bomb that was planted in Judi Bari's car in 1990. This verdict finds unlawful the actions of those in charge of the bombing investigation, and vindicates Bari and Cherney.
FBI agents Frank Doyle, John Reikes, Philip Sena and OPD officer Mike Sims were found to have violated Bari and Cherney's First Amendment rights. In addition, OPD officer Sitterud was found to have violated Cherney's First Amendment rights. Doyle was found to have violated Bari's Fourth Amendment rights related to the search of her home, and Doyle and OPD officer Chenault were found to have violated Cherney's Fourth Amendment rights. FBI agent Doyle and OPD officer Sims were found to have violated Bari's Fourth Amendment rights in relation to her arrest. The jury returned an 'undecided' verdict with respect to violations of Cherney's Fourth Amendment rights for his arrest.
Frank Doyle was the agent in charge of the 1990 bomb scene, and taught an FBI bomb school at a Louisiana Pacific clearcut a month prior to the bombing. Doyle was also the Squad 13 relief supervisor. Squad 13 was the joint terrorism squad made up of FBI and Oakland officers and collected extensive files on political groups in the Bay Area.
Reikes was the head of the FBI's terrorist squad who came to OPD headquarters the day of the bombing to give the inflammatory briefing on Earth First!
Sena was already engaged in a secret investigation of Earth First! and concocted a fake informant tip.
Sims was an OPD homicide lieutenant in charge of other officers investigating the bombing and the decision-maker for the unjust arrests of the activists.
Sitterud ignored evidence at the scene and concocted information that would implicate the activists. Chenault wrote the first fraudulent search warrant affidavit.
This verdict is a stinging indictment against the FBI's gross interference with people's right to dissent at a time when Attorney General Ashcroft, FBI Director Mueller and the Bush administration are arrogating huge power to themselves and the FBI to spy on legitimate groups and organizers and infringe the Constitutional rights of the public. It shows that even in the post-11 September era, the FBI can be taken to task for violating the civil rights of Americans.
With this landmark ruling, when next will Mumia Abu-Jamal be freed from prison following his stich-up as a Black activist?
This is the latest casualty in the war against terrorism as far as civil liberties are concerned. The problem with wanting to monitor a few people is that you end up having to keep data on everybody. -- Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch
Which websites we visit or where we travel with a mobile phone in our pocket reveals a great deal of personal information. Accessing this information needs to be made more difficult, not opened up to this huge range of new enquirers. I look at this list and wonder not at who they've added, but if I can possibly think of anyone they've left out. -- Ian Brown, Director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research
I am appalled at this huge increase in the scope of government snooping. Two years ago, we were deeply concerned that these powers were to be given to the police without any judicial oversight. Now they're handing them out to a practically endless queue of bureaucrats in Whitehall and town halls. Ian Brown, Director of FIPR
This list demonstrates an issue that many people may not have realised: it is not just the police who will be looking at our communications records, it is practically every public servant who will be able to play this game. -- John Wadham, director of Liberty
The Home Office has absolutely breached its commitment that this law would not become a general surveillance power for the government. The exhaustive list of organisations who will be able to access data without a court order proves that this amounts to a systematic attack on the right to privacy. -- Simon Davies, director of Privacy International
Do you think the Rotten Borough of Rushmoor should have powers to read your e-mails, listen in on your phone calls, know who you have been in contact with? If not, read on.
The government is about to give itself new powers to spy on us. From NHS executives to your local council, the Department of Work and Pensions to the Department for Transport; from the Home Office to the Post Office all could be getting the same powers of surveillance as the police. This brilliant idea comes thanks to a proposed amendment to the Regulation of Investigator Powers (RIP) Act. If the order is approved by MPs and the Lords a week later, these organisations will be able to make telephone companies and internet service providers (ISPs) hand over detailed personal information on any of us - without a court order.
Since 11 September 2001 governments across the world have used the threat of terrorism to pass new laws to listen in on our every move. In the UK it is now going beyond a Police State and extending downwards and outwards to encompass every petty bloody-minded bureaucrat in an attempt to create Big Brother. How long before Keith Holland in Rushmoor planning department will be monitoring anyone who dares to challenge the cosy relationship between the planners and developers?
The draft order to be debated by MPs reveals that ministers want the list of organisations empowered to demand communications data to be expanded to include seven Whitehall departments, every local authority in the country, NHS bodies in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and 11 other public bodies ranging from the postal services commission to the food standards agency. Until now, the list included only police forces, the intelligence services, customs and excise and the inland revenue.
Who can track your messages?
Officials from the empowered authorities will be able to access data under any of the broad range of grounds under which data can be obtained under the RIP Act. These include safeguarding national security, preventing or detecting crime, protecting public health and safety, collecting tax, and for any other purpose specified in an order by the Home Secretary.
The RIP Act was passed two years ago and authorises the targeting of groups or individuals in order, as the Home Office puts it, 'to obtain a picture of his life, activities and his associates'. It also authorises the bugging of homes and cars and the use of undercover agents. It covers the interception of pagers, mobile and satellite phones and e-mail, as well as private networks, including office switchboards.
Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, passed two years ago, each of these authorities will be able, with out a court order, to demand that phone companies, internet service providers and postal operators hand over detailed information on individuals such as their name and address, phone calls made and received, source and destination of e-mails, the identity of websites visited and mobile phone location data, which is capable of revealing the user's whereabouts at any given time and is accurate to within a few hundred metres.
Victims of surveillance cannot even appeal under the Human Rights Act, which supposedly enshrines the right to privacy because the RIP Act explicitly prevents such appeals. Your only chance to complain is to a tribunal (not a court), which of course meets in secret.
At which level of official from the latest list of authorities will be able to authorise a notice demanding data under section 22 of the Act? For the police, any officer of superintendent rank or above can demand an individual's records without a court order.
The Home Office insists that the powers, which will come into force in August if passed, are necessary to fight terrorism and crime in an age when communications increasingly take place via e-mail or mobile phone.
The draft order has also raised concerns that it might undermine investigative journalism. Editors are worried that the identities of sources may become impossible to protect.
Bob Satchwell, director of the Society of Editors:
The more we widen these powers and the further we take them away from any judicial oversight, the propensity becomes much greater for people to misuse them to find out where a journalist is getting material for a critical story. It would be different if the authorities had to go to court to get this information because editors would trust a senior judge to take into account the public interest of investigative journalism.
The measures have also caused consternation among internet service providers. Steve Rawlinson, chief technical officer of Claranet, which has about 500,000 customers in Britain, said: 'We deal with a lot of requests from the police at the moment and quite often we have to tell them we are not satisfied that they have sufficient grounds, that they are on a fishing expedition. At the moment, we can tell them to go and get a court order, but when this legislation comes into force, we will have no choice but to hand over the data.'
The last line of defence was EU directives on data protection and privacy, but these were nobbled beforehand in the 'war on terrorism'. Not to be outdone and no doubt cheered-on by the British government, the European Parliament recently gave further powers to all EU governments to retain all communications data, monitor internet, phone and e-mail traffic. European governments are now also able to force Internet service providers and phone companies to keep logs of their users' communications for an as yet unspecified length of time. These records will allow investigators to build up a detailed picture of an individual's movements on-line, including which websites they have visited, the nature of internet searches they have made, who they have e-mailed and when.
The government has climbed down, David Blunket has put the proposals on indefinite hold. To his credit Blunket admitted they had got it very badly wrong. Why did they back down? Because of an orchestrated grass roots campaign that overwhelmed parliamentarians and the media. Neither were even aware of the problems, the proposals would have quietly slipped through, had activists not leapt into action.
Before we all get too carried away remember there is still Echelon - the worlds greatest surveillance system, which captures and analyses virtually every phone call, fax, e-mail and telex message sent anywhere in the world!
[BVEJ newsletters passim]
WorldCom have carried out the world's biggest corporate fraud. The auditors were everyone's favourite crooked accountants, Anderson, recently found guilty in the US of obstructing justice. The price for the boardroom cooking the books is to be paid by 17,000 WorldCom employees who will lose their jobs.
Abbey National have seen their share price fall following a series of dodgy financial deals. The directors awarded themselves a 24% wage increase.
Bankrupt in all but name, Telewest directors awarded themselves a £700,000 bonus.
Vodaphone has suffered the worst ever corporate loss, £13.5 billion, boss Chris Gent has been given a massive shares bonus.
Jarvis, culprits of the Potters Bar rail crash are expecting a £5.2 billion bonanza from their part in the London Tube part-privatisation. Tube Lines (the consortium that will have the lucrative 30 year contract to maintain Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines) partner Amey is expecting a similar bonanza.
A presentation was made by TAG Environment Manager at the Cove Brook AGM. To his credit he did seem to be trying to make the best of a bad job and implement what environmental improvements he could. The opening up of Cove Brook across the airfield site will be an improvement to culverted channels, but that was about the only good point to emerge. On the downside extra water runoff into Cove Brook, balancing ponds that may work, siltation traps that may work, reed beds that may work, most of the runoff from the runway not filtered or intercepted.
It was probably a shock to many members of Cove Brook for the first time to hear of the many problems. A member of Rushmoor planning department did his best to divert attention away from dangerous areas of discussion. Who was he acting for?
Any discussion of the wider problems of heathland destruction and siltation of Fleet Pond were ruled strictly off limits.
Over one inch of rain after the Queen's Jubilee and the golf course was flooded. TAG breathed a sigh of relief as they expected all their recent work to Cove Brook to be washed away.
One of the effects of heavy rainfall is flooding of and mud on the runway. Should TAG gain a CAA licence under these lethal conditions?
A new airfield consultative panel has been formed. It consists of Roland Dibbs (an insult to Knellwood, who falls over backwards to support TAG), John Starling (who dare not say boo) and Pat Devereux (who dare not rock the Tory pro-TAG boat for fear of deselection).
£800,000 of public money has been allocated to improve security at Farnborough Airport. It proves our point re the lack of security at Farnborough, but why should the public pay?
An air traffic controller has identified in a confidential report that budget airlines are cutting corners and endangering safety. No different to the TAG operation at Farnborough. Planes are all over the place as they come into land and on take-off, separation distances between landing aircraft is very short leaving planes barely time to clear the runway before the next one lands. CAA are aware of the problems but are turning a convenient blind eye. Legally not their problem as not a civilian airport. MoD are turning a blind eye as they are profiting from the airport.
As with last summer, local residents are once again being disturbed by noise from the airfield. As last year, Rushmoor are once again turning a blind eye and refusing to carry out any enforcement action.
They took over this place [Kingsmead] four years ago, here and Queensmead, and they have destroyed it totally. They have ripped the heart out of the town. -- Richard Ansell, independent trader in Kingsmead, Farnborough
Several more shops have either closed or are about to close - the butcher in Kingsmead (near Holland & Barrett), Box Clever (Queensmead, opp The Mead), Factory Cards (next to Book Boyz), mobile phone shop (The Mead), the baker in The Mead is about to close. Several more shops are on their way as they are unable to pay their rent. Farnborough must be the only town with neither butcher nor baker (it never had a candlestick maker).
The larger chain stores are not doing any better. Dixons and Sainsbury's are the worst performing stores in their group, Car Phone Warehouse is somewhere near the bottom, Supadrug is not covering its running costs, and so the list goes on. Sainsbury's lease expires in October and it is not likely to be renewed.
Retailers have finally got their act together but they way they are going about it does not inspire confidence. Kingsmead retailers called a meeting with St Modwen directors (parent company of KPI). Queensmead retailers, even though they both share the same problems, were told to look after their own affairs. The main topic was rent reduction. Whilst this may be of immediate concern for some retailers, to at least temporarily stay bankruptcy, the main topic it was essential to discuss, the flawed KPI plans for the town (the root cause of everyone's problems), was not even on the agenda.
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